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Prime Minister John Key says there's no crisis in manufacturing and he isn't interested in a union-organised summit to look at ways to help the sector. The tide is running out!
8The government isn't interested in a union-organised summit to discuss what can be done to help the manufacturing sector save jobs. It doesn't want to hear the truth.
The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) blames the government's hands-off approach to the economy for a string of redundancies.
Business representatives, unionists, economists and political parties will gather in Auckland on Friday.
Prime Minister John Key says he hasn't been invited and wouldn't go anyway.
"There's no crisis in manufacturing," Mr Key told reporters on Monday.
"Over the last four years exports have been consistent and the number of jobs has been up a touch from 245,000 to 255,000 - in the last 12 months alone GDP growth in the manufacturing sector was 2.5 per cent."
The EPMU says mass redundancies in recent months and the number of Kiwis heading to Australia is evidence of a deepening jobs crisis and the need for a new approach.
"The common thread through all the redundancies is the hands-off approach of the last 30 years, which says the government should keep out of the economy, leave our exchange rate to be set by speculators and accept the decline of manufacturing as somehow inevitable," EPMU national secretary Bill Newson said.
Mr Key says he knows the high exchange rate "weighs heavily" on some exporters but the other side of the coin is that it makes the equipment and parts they import cheaper.
The EPMU says there are alternative ways to help manufacturing and the country needs to discuss them.
Acknowledgements: © 2012 NZN, NZCity
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